Karman+ 押注小行星水可作轨道燃料：获 2000 万美元种子轮，2027 年发射验证

做的是什么生意

Develops autonomous asteroid-mining spacecraft: fly to near-Earth asteroids, mine and extract water from regolith, convert it into hydrogen-oxygen propellant, and provide refueling services for on-orbit satellites and tugs.

启动资金：$20M seed round (2025-02, led by Plural and Hummingbird, with participation from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey, and the CEO himself).

起因

After Teun van den Dries sold the real-estate data company GeoPhy (about $290M, closed in 2022), he reassessed his life direction and founded Karman+ with data scientist Daynan Crull. He judged asteroid mining to be underestimated: near-Earth asteroids are near the ecliptic plane and easier to reach than the Moon. In February 2025, the company came out of stealth, announced a $20M seed round, and disclosed its first mission, High Frontier.

经过

High Frontier is Karman+'s first technology-verification spacecraft: fly to a near-Earth asteroid, grab regolith at the kilogram scale, return scientific data, and keep total mission cost to $10–15M. The 2025 EPSC-DPS conference abstract shows that the launch window is set for SpaceX Transporter 19, around early 2027, with the primary target asteroid 2022 DC5 and the mission expected to be completed in mid-2028. TechCrunch pointed out risks: the spacecraft has not yet been built and tested, on-orbit refueling itself has not yet been solved, and additional financing will be needed as launch approaches.

结果

Still building: as of 2026-09-01, there has been no launch or shutdown news; High Frontier's launch window has slipped from the initially promoted 2026 to around early 2027, and the company is advancing development of autonomous navigation and zero-gravity excavation equipment on schedule.

可借鉴之处

先用小任务证明需求，再讲宏大叙事：瞄准地球同步轨道加注，使用现成组件，使演示成本低于 1500 万美元。